The partisan House Jan. 6 select committee’s investigation could backfire on President Joe Biden and Democrats in next year’s midterms, according to the Washington Examiner.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., created the committee — comprised of Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans — to investigate events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The panel has focused on the actions of former President Donald Trump and his associates.
The Examiner said the committee is energizing Trump’s base amid speculation the former president might run again in 2024.
“The Democrats’ obsession with President Trump and Trump supporters is a political loser, as we saw during the November elections,” Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund president Jenny Beth Martin told the Examiner.
“The problem is when Democrats use the criminal process to punish Trump officials and supporters, as we’re seeing with Mark Meadows, among others.”
The House on Tuesday voted to hold former White House chief of staff Meadows in contempt of Congress after he stopped cooperating with Pelosi’s select committee. It was the first time the lower chamber voted to hold a former member in contempt since the 1830s.
Committee members Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., joined every Democrat in supporting the measure.
Martin told the Examiner that the committee and Democrat lawmakers are “dividing our country,” despite Biden having “promised to bring our country together.”
“The Democrats’ policies are failing, as we see with soaring inflation, a border crisis, and a disastrous Afghanistan pullout,” Martin told the Examiner. “Obsessing over the 45th president won’t save them.”
Biden, who promised to bring “a new normal” to the country after the COVID-19 pandemic, “has struggled to capture the public’s attention as he pushes, for instance, the importance of vaccines and his spending bills,” the Examiner said.
“The Jan. 6 committee’s flurry of activity has allowed [Biden’s] relatively light public appearance schedule to go unnoticed,” the Examiner reported.
The White House also lambasted Fox News personalities for texting Meadows on Jan. 6, urging him to implore Trump to discourage people from swarming the Capitol. The texts were released by the partisan committee.
“It’s disappointing, and unfortunately, not surprising, that some of the very same individuals who were willing to mourn, condemn, and express horror over what happened on Jan. 6 in private were totally silent in public or, even worse, were spreading lies,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
As Biden’s staff tries to keep memories of Jan. 6 in people’s minds, Psaki said the president will “commemorate” the day next month, “no question.”
